Russia's High-Profile Health Watchdog Loses Job

Move Follows Long Career of Unusual Medical Advice, Import Bans

MOSCOW—Russia's top public-health inspector, perhaps best known for warning anti-Kremlin activists in 2011 that their mass demonstrations risked a rapid spread of the flu, has lost his job after years of issuing offbeat exhortations and adding fuel to some of the Kremlin's most high-profile geopolitical disputes.

Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Russian consumer protection agency and health regulator since 2004, didn't have his annual contract renewed and instead was appointed to a lower-profile post as an aide to Prime...